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Monday, February 24, 2003

Bad news for the SF Bay Area, especially Silicon Valley,
Picture grim for job rebound VALLEY FORECAST: RECOVERY IN 2011.
For the Tolkien fans, 'Elric Saga' fantasy series optioned. Interestingly enough, the saga will be produced by Chris and Paul Weitz. The Weitz's directed "About a Boy", but this time they will just be producing and not writing or directing.
This is a sad story, Alleged murder-suicide in Concord. The news reporter on the radio said that the daughter was mentally disabled, and the wife had Alzheimers. The neighbours are calling it a mercy killing. The details are sketchy, but it's so sad.

Did the father and husband just give up on life and said screw it? The man shot the daughter and wife, and then himself. What would drive a person to do this? I think the man was probably taking care of the retarded daughter and the wife all by himself. What a burden. And now the daughter is alive, how messed is that? If she lives, who is going to take care of her. Is it a good thing that the daughter is mentally disabled because then maybe she won't have to freak out about her dad trying to kill her?

And I feel bad because the writer in me is saying in my head, "there's a story there, one heck of a story". But what a sad story it would be to write. I guess I would only be interested in writing the story so I could speculate what would drive a person to do this. It would be a fictional account of course, although it would be interesting to see if someone else wants to find out the real story behind the news headline and will write the true story.

What would drive a person to such depths of despair, that he or she would kill the only two people he or she loved?
A few short notes.

Suprisingly, the movie "Gods and Generals" was sold out at AMC 1000 on Van Ness on Sunday. You wouldn't think this kind of movie would be sold out here, but it was despite the reviews. The movie theatre only had two showings because of the film length, and that may explain why it was sold out. If I want to see it, I will definitley have to think about buying movie tickets online.

The news is full of stories about the high price of gas in the SF Bay Area. I'm lucky, because I pick up gas at Costco where the price last week was only $1.86. The gas station is right near my office, so I can go during the day when the lines aren't very long. I saw a gas station in my neighbourhood that was charging $2.99 for full service premium, and they were people at the station. I guess for some people the price of gas doesn't matter.

I see gas guzzling cars on my daily commute, and I wonder what their gas bills are like. My car gets okay mileage since I mostly drive city miles, and average about 22 mpg. Still, that's better than 15 mpg. I have a small car with a small gas tank, but a short commute to work. I drive about 260 miles a week, and end up picking up gas every 10 days. When I put together my 2003 home budget, I expected the gas prices to go up and planned accordingly but maybe I didn't budget enough. The war hasn't even started yet, and already the gas is going up. I wouldn't be surprised if gas goes to $4-5 a gallon if and when the war does start.

Look for the economy to further tank when the gas prices go that high. I'm not looking forward to that.